


A Tale of Three Queens.

by gallantrejoinder



Category: Maleficent (2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, Femslash, Fuck underdeveloped female characters, Gen, Give Queen Leah a girlfriend (Maleficent) and her daughter back too, It's not super explicit but tread carefully!, The Rape/Non-Con warning is for references to her marriage to Stephan, abuse recovery
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-12
Updated: 2017-10-12
Packaged: 2018-12-14 11:11:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11781954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gallantrejoinder/pseuds/gallantrejoinder
Summary: Queen Leah is raised from birth to marry, produce an heir, and keep quiet while the menfolk do the talking. Seeing no way out from this fate, she quietly submits to it, marrying King Stephan at the behest of her father the king, giving birth to a daughter she does not know how to love, and letting Stephan take Aurora away when a curse is wrought upon them all due to his own cruelty. Thenceforth Leah begins to waste away for wont of her daughter and any kindness, any love. And the story could end there.But one day, Leah decides to take her life back.Embarking on a journey to the Moors, Leah begins to feel once more, seeking out her daughter and growing close to the very faerie whose curse took Aurora away. Yet happiness will never come easily to Leah, and she must learn to fight for those she loves ...





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So who else saw Maleficent and began to wonder about Aurora's birth mother? What were her hopes and dreams? Did she want to marry Stephan? Did she have regrets? Did she cry out for her daughter in her final moments?
> 
> ... Nobody? Just me?
> 
> Well, anyway. I've been working on this on and off since I first saw the movie a couple of years ago, and here it is. The story of Queen Leah, and how she took hold of her own story, and refused to die quietly. I hope you enjoy it!

When Leah was a girl, she dreamt of living outside the walls of her family’s palace. The vines which crept onto her windowsill and flowered in the spring held more wonder than any of her lessons could provide, and she revelled in the days she could spend running through fields of tall grasses, ever enchanted with their whispering. In her daydreams she ruled her vast queen’s domain with mercy and love – the tiny, cramped kingdom of her father became a place where walls were few and the sky opened wide above her, interrupted only by the branches of the tallest trees.

 

But like so many children, as she grew older, she forgot her dreams.

 

Her marriage to King Stefan is announced a month after his coronation, and a week after her twentieth birthday. Leah has known for six weeks. From the moment the young man approaches her father, dragging the enormous, yet pitifully limp wings of the faerie who bested her father not months ago, Leah understands that she is meant to be his reward. There will be no glorious reign as queen for her. Her husband-to-be smiles at her and flatters her, but she cannot seem to forget her first memory of him – striding into her father’s court with his head held high, the limp wings of a dead faerie darkening the cold flagstones with blood.

 

“He is handsome, Leah. Be grateful that _this_ man bested that damned beast of the Moors, and not some other. I shall be glad to surrender my crown to him, and so you ought to be to marry him,” her father says, the day the announcement is carried throughout the kingdom.

 

Leah bows her head.

 

“Yes, father,” she says, seeing the wide, open skies of her childhood narrowing and collapsing even as she smiles demurely at the ground, her father nodding in approval. Though he himself has tried to conquer the Moors, his small kingdom has never chafed at him in quite the same way it does her. She wants to run through the Moors – to destroy the border between dense thickets of trees and her grassy homeland. Her father, though, has always wanted to oversee them with the firm hand he uses to rule his family.

 

The night before her wedding, Leah lies in her chambers for hours without meeting sleep. Finally, with her eyes stinging evermore and her stomach roiling, she rises to tend to the dying fire. Next to the hearth is a tiny nook in the wall which she had been able to squeeze into as a child. She feels an overwhelming urge to crawl back into it now, overcome with fear.  _One cannot refuse a king,_ she thinks. But a treacherous voice whispers back,  _Yet you were born to be a queen – and a king cannot always be right_. Her father's broken promise that the Moors would be theirs had proven that. What if Stefan does not come to love her? Worse, what if he mistreats her? _I will never leave these walls_ , she thinks, with panic rising like bile in her throat.

 

Leah longs for her mother. But there is no point in crying for a dead woman’s comfort. The back of her father’s hand has seen to that. Leah will never forget the first time she asked him when her mother would return.

 

Shivering, she realises how long she’s been standing in the cold, and returns to her bed, nesting herself in the covers. As she fights back a yawn, she feels a little closer to sleep. But when she finally drifts off, her dreams are strange and terrifying, filled with the screams of a woman she cannot see and her husband’s face, morphing into her father’s, becoming a great dragon that fills the sky with its wings and darkens the sun forever …

 

~

 

Her wedding passes in a sea of bright colours and laughter, and Leah feels as if she has dreamt the whole affair. Ladies fuss about her gown – ladies who did not dare look twice at her when she lived day to day under her father’s command. There are sighs as she enters the hall and walks towards her husband, his smiling face showing just a few too many teeth.

 

There is a great feast, and Leah, feeling faint, eats just a little – enough to sustain her for the coming night. She knows what to expect, but the fear and nerves her ladies in waiting assure her are so normal and common are tinged with something else, some thread of _wrongness_ that causes her hands to shake when she does not fold them delicately in her lap.

 

When he brings her to his chambers, it takes all her willpower not to scream. But he is uninterested in her.

 

“Do you see them?” He asks her, his voice tinged with an urgency she cannot understand.

 

She has no doubt regarding his meaning.

 

The wings he dragged into her father’s – no. _His_ hall, all those weeks ago, sit idle and magnificent in a glass case between the two western windows. They almost glow in the moonlight, clean and folded neatly, bearing no sign of the blood spatter that once harshly threatened their beauty.

 

She pauses too long before answering, caught up in their beauty and splendour – they must have been stuffed, somehow, and preserved –

 

“ _DO YOU SEE THEM?_ ” he demands, grabbing her arm tightly, breathing wine into her face.

 

“Yes!” She cries, flinching violently with the recollection of her father, years ago.

 

He stares at her while she looks at the ground, her heart in her throat pounding like thunder.

 

“Good,” he mutters, and says no more. Mystified, she waits for him to do something – anything – to indicate what he intends.

 

But the wine on his breath did not lie, and almost immediately, he collapses on their wedding bed and sleeps. Hardly daring to breath, Leah lies down on the far side of the bed, unable even to remove her bridal clothes.

 

As she stares up into the wooden panelling of the enormous bed, Leah feels, for the first time, that perhaps her husband’s refusal to fulfil his marriage vows is less terrifying than the thought that he might not. Silently, she lifts her hand to her arm and traces the bruises she is sure he has given her.

 

For the second night in a row, Leah dreams only nightmares.

 

~

 

Eight months after her wedding, her father dies. Leah does not cry, and her husband does not notice the numb acceptance she feels instead of grief. Perhaps there are those amongst her servants who see her dry eyes – but they dare not question her, for fear of her husband. She stands silent and still during the grand funerary proceedings, and says nothing of her husband’s irritated twitching at her side.

 

After the funeral, Stefan grabs her by the arms and half-drags her to his chambers. She wants to be sick, panic rising in her throat – she wants to fight him, or do something, _anything_ to stop what she promised to do in her marriage vows. But her father is dead and her husband has no heir. There is only one way to remedy the fact.

 

As always, Leah remembers her duties.

 

Afterwards, while Stefan sleeps, Leah lies in her husband’s bed and stares at the great wings that overlook her husband’s chambers. Somehow they still seem living, and Leah thinks back to her wedding night, and how delicately preserved the wings had seemed to her eyes. Now they seem far too real, too bright in the late evening sun, to truly be no more than stuffed. She aches to touch them, looking as soft and clean in the setting sun as they do, so she rises from the bed, wrapping a sheet spotted with her blood around her naked body.

 

She takes no more than three steps towards the great glass cabinet at the end of the room before her husband turns in his sleep, and she startles. When she turns to look again at the wings, her body feels heavy and sore, and she finds that she cannot bring herself to open the cabinet after all.

 

~

 

The child is born a few weeks too soon, and surgeons and midwives alike whisper in worried tones at her bedside when the birth pains begin. Her husband is absent, on some distant hunt – though, strangely, nowhere near the wall in the south, where animals are known to be trusting and easily caught.

 

Nevertheless, her child is born while he hunts, delivering the killing blow to some poor innocent animal that he might bring home its horns for a trophy. And though Leah screams and screams while her blood stains finely woven sheets, when it is all over and they place the pitiful, crying thing she has birthed in her arms, she feels nothing at all.

 

Her husband returns triumphant days later, a vicious kind of pride in his eyes as he raises a pair of antlers above his head, with all his wiry strength. He proclaims that the beast he slaughtered will be served for a feast on the day of their daughter’s christening. It will take place on the morrow.

 

“Early christening is the only way to protect her from evil spirits,” is the justification given for the rushed event, according to the young handmaiden who delivers the news. The girl cannot disguise her pinched brow, her worry and harried feelings.

 

Leah is barely ready to leave her bed, still weak from the early birth, but she graciously smiles and accepts his decision, nodding her assent. She knows the young girl wants to say more, can see it in her face – but Leah cannot find it in herself to reassure the girl any more than she can to protest against her husband.

 

She has begun to feel sick every time she gazes upon her babe, her flesh and blood, and she tells no one because it is monstrous for a mother to not know how to love her child. All she can see, looking into the innocent, wide eyes of her baby, is a grey, empty future stretching away into a distant horizon, filled with more births, more violent conceptions, more children until the king is satisfied with a son. She dully thinks that one of her children will kill her eventually.

 

_What is the point in it all?_

 

A voice whispers to her at night, filling her with a kind of acceptance, an apathy she has previously been unused to. She is married to a violent man. She will bear his children, and be unable to protect them from him. He will hurt them as he has hurt her.

 

And just as she has begun to think there are no more surprises left in the life she has had planned out for her, the name _Maleficent_ returns like a cold shock of water to a kingdom grown lazy in her absence.

 

Maleficent grins, with red lips and white teeth. Her husband, the man who bows to no one anymore – he begs. Begs for the life of their daughter. It is the only time Leah has ever felt any kind of empathy with him, because despite everything, he is Aurora’s father. He must love her, even if Leah cannot.

 

But his protestations do nothing. Maleficent, inhuman as she is, feels nothing. Leah sees the same emptiness in her eyes that she sees in her own in the mirror every day. And so Leah becomes the mother of a cursed daughter.

 

It is Stephan’s idea to hide their daughter away, and Leah hates him for it. But she does not stop him. The fairies, stupid though they may be, promise to care for Aurora. Some part of Leah feels relieved that she will no longer hear her daughter’s cries, yet still there is a distant ache when she is gone. And further at the forefront of her mind is anger. At him, for taking away still more of what was once hers. Chipping away at her identity like a chisel.

 

~

 

Somehow, years pass. Leah does not understand it. Though there are days where she almost feels once more, any attempts to change things are quickly thwarted by her husband, running the kingdom into the ground with his obsession with the elfin woman that took their child. Whenever his wrath turns to her, she stops feeling for many days at a time. The world passes as if in a hazy daydream.

 

Leah becomes pregnant twice more. Both children are lost before their fifth month inside her womb. After that, Stephan stops trying to force an heir out of her. He locks himself away with his advisors, and works the kingdom to death.

 

Leah wishes she would die too, most days. She cannot bear to live, if her day-to-day life can really be considered living. She often does not leave her bed, citing headaches. Her monthly courses stop and start, irregular and painful. The mere thought of being dressed by her maids makes her burst into tears some days, while others she cannot be roused and must be dressed as one would a ragdoll.

 

She does not know how, but fourteen years pass in that manner. And never once does she make any attempt to change her fate, knowing that what is ordained must come to pass, and death no longer holds any terror for her anyway.

 

~

 

She gets sick, sicker than she has ever been. A fever. God knows how it happened, she never leaves her room these days. But it happens.

 

And it is curious, but – she finds herself afraid.

 

Afraid to die. To leave the kingdom of her father in the state that Stephan has reduced it to. To leave the world a mother with no daughter, never having held her enough. To die a vessel, having never really lived at all.

 

She is dying properly now, but for the first time in sixteen years, she wants to _live_.

 

They send her husband a message. She hears her maids whispering, waiting for him. They told him, hours ago, that she might not make it through the night. He has not come. Busy communing with the wretched _things_ in the glass case.

 

Her breath comes shallowly. She does not feel time pass, and forgets sometimes, where she is, and how she came to be there. But she knows. She knows that he is not there.

 

And it angers her.

 

It awakens some long-dead part of her, something that can fight. Something that will make her draw breath when her lungs hurt so badly she does not want to breathe anymore, something that will force her heart to beat whenever the minute tremors of such an action cause her pain.

 

Leah lives, for that night, at least. But she does not let her maids tell her husband that. Because if she is to live, Stephan can never know about it.

 

~

 

Living is not what Leah has done for the sixteen years of her marriage, but nor did she ever truly live well before it, either. She knows that trapped inside his castle, she cannot ever learn how to perform the task.

 

It is the thought of her daughter that finally prompts a plan in her newly awakened mind.

 

She had not loved the screaming child she knew for so little time all those many years ago. But that does not mean she is incapable of it. If Leah has one thing in the world that is hers, and hers alone, it is her daughter. Her husband has no claim to her anymore, having never mentioned her name in a decade, so Leah must take up the mantle of parental love instead.

 

That means finding her daughter.

 

Leah gathers precious little with her when she leaves the castle in the dead of night. Some food, provisions – one or two trinkets from her childhood. A few gold coins. No expensive gowns, though she has few of them these days regardless. Her husband’s war against the Moors has seen to that.

 

No, she dresses simply, and disguises her face. That is all that is needed.

 

Not a single person stops her as she exits. Nobody cares anymore – not when there is so much to be afraid of. All she needs is a horse, easily led, and she is gone.

 

~

 

Leah quickly loses her way in the endless woods by the border to the Moors.

 

She knows – knows in her _bones_ – that her daughter must be near. Sometimes the road reveals itself to her easily, and she gains ground quickly. The faeries had promised to keep her daughter nearby, less than a day’s ride, just in case. There is no doubt in Leah’s mind that she ought to be there by now. Her daughter, her grown-up child, should be close by, and safe.

 

Yet every morning when Leah wakes, she is lost once more. The forest changes around her, and she spends weeks trying to make sense of it, to no avail. It is enough to try any woman, but Leah has come so far – survived sixteen years with a dead soul, a violent husband, and a lost daughter – so she refuses to be swayed. She must find her daughter. She must.

 

One late evening, having made her way all day east, she glances around herself and realises she has no idea where she is – and she _screams_ with frustration at it. Dropping to the ground, she continues to scream, uncaring whether anyone should hear her, before her throat refuses to cooperate any longer and will only let her hiccup and sob.

 

Her sleep that night is plagued with anger and anxiety, and when she awakens, the Queen of the Moors stands before her.

 

“If you are planning to steal your daughter back to her father, your majesty,” Maleficent says coolly, “You must understand that I will never allow you to find her.”

 

Leah stands, slowly, nearly shaking with rage. The faerie who dared to steal her daughter away will not stand in her way, not today, not ever. Leah is _done_ with despair.

 

“That bastard will never lay his filthy hands on my daughter,” Leah spits. “I will fight you myself if I must, to keep her from him.”

 

Maleficent’s eyebrows rise, clearly disconcerted by Leah’s answer. Leah stares, defiant, into her impossibly green eyes for what feels like an eternity. The expression on Maleficent’s face is tinged with fear, and it adds fire to the fury burning inside Leah.

 

“It has been fifteen years,” Maleficent says, finally. Her voice is softer than a whisper. “Fifteen years since I cast that curse upon your daughter, and you would still try to protect her, though not even I can?”

 

“Yes,” Leah answers, without hesitation. “Above everything else. With everything that I am, I will protect her. I am her _mother_.”

 

At the word, Maleficent slowly lowers herself to the ground, placing a hand at her side in invitation.

 

“Sit. We have much to discuss, my queen,” Maleficent says, calmly.

 

When Leah continues to hesitate, Maleficent sighs, and explains further. “I will take you to your daughter. But you must first understand how these things came to be as they are.”

 

Leah sits, still mistrustful, still angry – but needing to hear what the eerie creature has to say.

 

Maleficent pauses, contemplative, before beginning. She does not meet Leah’s eyes.

 

“Many years ago … I found a friend in man’s kingdom. We were but children. And I thought he was kind. I fell in love with him, but … the lure of man’s riches was too great, and he left me, alone, to defend the Moors against his kind. I had accepted his loss.”

 

Once more, Maleficent hesitates, as if she has never voiced her story aloud before. Leah waits, impatient.

 

“He came back, one day. He said that he never should have left, and that we could go back to the way things were. I was … I was so very happy. But it was all a lie. A trick. You see, the king of his homeland had sent out a decree, that anyone who could destroy me would become the next king. And he could not resist, knowing that he had my trust still.”

 

A creeping sense of foreboding rises up Leah’s spine, making her breath stop as she realises what Maleficent is telling her.

 

Maleficent’s expression contorts, through anger and grief alike, as she continues to tell her story.

 

“He poisoned me with a sleeping draught. And when I awoke, he had stolen my wings, and left me mutilated, and alone.”

 

_Mutilated, and alone_.

 

Leah knows the feeling well.

 

“I swore revenge,” Maleficent continues, heedless of Leah’s sudden shock of empathy. “And I made a terrible, terrible mistake. I did not simply kill him, as I should have. I instead cursed someone who had done no harm to anybody – who had never hurt a soul. I cursed your daughter, in the hopes of causing him pain.”

 

“He has not spoken her name in years,” Leah interrupts. “His obsession with you overpowers all things. Fatherhood was never what he truly wanted.”

 

Maleficent nods. “I know. It is all through my own weakness that you have come to harm. Your kingdom is in ruin, while he plots, and plans, and obsesses. That I cannot help. But Aurora …”

 

“Where is she?” Leah demands, growing impatient.

 

“The words of my curse had a catch, one I did not foresee,” Maleficent presses on. Leah fights the urge to stamp her foot with frustration. “I cursed her to grow up loved, by all who beheld her. And then I watched over her, to ensure that my curse would do as it ought … And I, too, came to love her.”

 

Leah stares without comprehension, with only disbelief. It cannot be. She almost wants to laugh, so sick of tears is she, but she can make no sound.

 

Maleficent, the Queen of the Moors, scourge of all who would battle her, the subject of her husband’s obsession … She has come to love Leah’s daughter.

 

“I have, for some time now, thought of her like a daughter. So you see – I understand why you are angry with me, and would try to take my life. I feel such hatred for myself beyond what even you, Aurora’s true mother, can imagine. Were it not necessary to continue searching for a way to undo what I have done, I…”

 

Maleficent trails off.

 

By God above, Leah is still wrathful.

 

This is her daughter whom Maleficent speaks of. An innocent girl, who had never harmed anybody – who had hardly even had the chance to be _loved_ , at the time of Maleficent’s curse. Nothing can justify it, not even Maleficent’s grief over what was done to her by the king.

 

But …

 

“Have you found a way?” Leah asks, finally breaking the silence that has descended.

 

Maleficent cannot look her in the eyes as she shakes her head.

 

“Then,” Leah begins, carefully, trying to understand, “I must ask you to continue to try.”

 

Maleficent’s unearthly eyes finally meet Leah’s gaze, and she is clearly unable to hide how startled she is.

 

“I cannot forgive you for what you did to her, not yet,” Leah says, still feeling that life-giving anger and needing it to continue to fuel her. “But you may be the only one who can prevent what you have caused. And for that I will not try to stop you.”

 

Maleficent shakes her head slowly, wondrously. “You could not. No mortal could.”

 

“Nevertheless,” Leah promises.

 

“Nevertheless,” Maleficent agrees.

 

Leah will no longer hide her impatience. “Where is she?”

 

“Exactly where she was taken all those years ago,” Maleficent says. “Those faeries you chose to protect her are … less than sensible. I have _had to_ watch over her for many years, with the aid of my familiar. But it is no longer safe for her to continue living there. I wish to take her to the Moors – with your company, and permission, of course.”

 

“Do what you must,” Leah says, unable to completely repress a thrill at the thought of entering the lands of her childhood dreams. “But do not keep her from me any longer.”

 

“As you wish,” Maleficent replies.

 

And in the next moment, the forest around them _shifts_ , and Leah knows where she is, at last.

 

~

 

The first glimpse of Aurora that Leah catches in fifteen years is through a thicket of trees, obscuring her vision with shadows. But where Aurora lies, idling the day away in a field of grass, there is only sunlight. Leah cannot breathe.

 

“Go to her,” Maleficent whispers in Leah’s ear, closer than Leah had realised. It sends a shiver up her spine. “Her guardians are gone. You need only go to her.”

 

Leah nods, silently, not daring to look at the faerie to whom she still feels so much complicated fury. This moment is for her and her daughter alone.

 

Stepping out from the trees, it takes a moment for Aurora to notice Leah standing there, silently, unable to speak.

 

“Oh!” Aurora says, blinking in surprise. “I am sorry. I did not see you there. Are you – are you lost? Do you want to come inside?”

 

Leah shakes her head, tears threatening to spill down her cheeks.

 

“I am not lost,” she replies, shakily. “I came here for you.”

 

Leah sees Aurora hesitate, sudden caution remembered.

 

“I will not hurt you,” Leah hurries to add. “Never. I could never hurt you, Aurora.”

 

“Who are you?”

 

Leah moves closer before speaking, never daring to tear her eyes away from Aurora’s fearful, yet curious face.

 

“I am your mother,” she chokes out, before a sob rises in her throat, and she is forced to raise her hands to her mouth to hold it in.

 

“My mother?” Aurora looks stunned.

 

Leah nods, suppressing another cry. Behind her, the trees shift, and Maleficent steps out.

 

“Godmother?” Aurora turns a questioning gaze to Maleficent, and Leah gasps at the moniker.

 

“It is true, beastie,” Maleficent says quietly. “This is your mother. She has been looking for you for a long time.”

 

“I should never have let him send you away,” Leah blurts out. “I am so sorry. So very sorry. I wish … Please, Aurora, forgive me.”

 

“I … do not …” Aurora looks confused, eyes darting between Maleficent – her godmother, apparently – and Leah.

 

“All will be explained,” Maleficent says, though there is an unsteadiness to her voice that makes Leah wonder just how much Maleficent has kept from Aurora regarding the curse. “But I promise you, Aurora – this is your mother, and she has waited for many years to see you.”

 

Aurora’s gaze finally returns to Leah, who feels stripped bare by the undisguised curiosity in her daughter’s eyes.

 

“I wish … I wish you would explain, now,” Aurora says, finally, and Leah nods, quickly.

 

“When you were a babe,” she begins, taking a shuddery breath, “Your father … sent you away, to be raised by three faeries. We wanted you to be safe. _I_ wanted you to be safe.”

 

“My aunts? They – are they the faeries you speak of?”

 

“Yes,” Maleficent answers, for Leah. “They are.”

 

Aurora’s eyes widen.

 

“We only wanted you to be safe,” Leah pleads.

 

“Safe from what?”

 

Leah glances at Maleficent, who confirms, with an almost imperceptible stiffening of her shoulders, that she has not told Aurora the truth about the curse. As satisfying as it might be to reveal the truth to Aurora now, and let Maleficent leave them alone, Leah cannot bear to cause her daughter any more pain. And Maleficent has promised to undo the curse – so that revelation will have to wait.

 

“Just … safe,” Leah says. Maleficent’s shoulders loosen. Leah knows she must explain, and so she takes a deep breath to steady herself before continuing. “Aurora … You are of royal blood. Your father is the king of these lands, and I am the queen, the sole heir of the previous king. I was married to your father sixteen years ago, and gave birth to you nearly two years later. But he was a cruel man. He sent you away, and never let me see you. I nearly died in that castle, nearly wasted away from misery. But I made it out – I left, finally, to find _you_ , my daughter. The one thing I could not let him take from me forever. And Maleficent led me to you.”

 

“Oh,” Aurora breathes, her expression difficult to gauge.

 

“I am so sorry,” Leah repeats, wishing there was some way to convey the depth of her regret that was not as meaningless as those same words, repeated again and again.

 

Aurora steps closer to them, scrutinising Leah with an unwavering gaze, now. Leah feels her hands shaking a little as she twists them nervously in front of her.

 

But then Aurora takes a few more steps, bringing herself still closer, until she’s directly in front of Leah – and without a word, she throws her arms around Leah, holding her tight. Leah wraps her arms around her daughter, the dam breaking as tears come pouring forth.

 

“My mother,” Aurora says, in a wondrous tone.

 

Leah cannot speak, choking on sobs of relief, but she glances to the side, where Maleficent stands, as still as a statue. There is a misery in her eyes that Leah cannot name.

 

She does not dwell on it. She thinks only of her daughter, and how to keep her safe, and how much she has missed in the fifteen years since Aurora was born, alone.


	2. Chapter 2

They three – soon joined by Maleficent’s familiar, a tricksy bird-man named Diaval – journey to the Moors the next day. It pains Leah to leave her daughter alone in the cottage for one more night, but they cannot inform the faeries (Aurora’s ‘aunts’) that she is leaving without arousing suspicion, and besides, Aurora wishes to gather her things and say one last goodbye to the place where she was raised. Thus, they are delayed – but the journey itself, the next day, is mercifully quick.

 

When Leah enters the Moors for the first time, she clutches tight at her daughter’s hand in wonder. Aurora, for her part, has been here before, and simply laughs at her mother’s awe. The Moors are better than anything Leah ever imagined as a child. They are magical, and glow with life in the twilight. True, the lands are somewhat darker and colder than Leah would have expected, but they are no less wondrous for it.

 

She turns in a wide circle as they finally come to a halt by a pond Aurora claims is the best place for rest and relaxation. Leah cannot keep the amazement from her face as she drinks it all in – the shadowy places where reflective eyes peer out, and the shimmering glow of the water. Finally, she stops, facing Maleficent by accident. Maleficent simply gazes at her with that implacable stare, yet – there is a hint, perhaps, in the corners of her mouth, of a smile.

 

“Your lands are very beautiful,” Leah says demurely, ever the daughter of a king.

 

“Yes. But they were not so … enclosed, in my youth,” Maleficent admits.

 

“They could not be more beautiful than this, surely?” Aurora says, sounding shocked. “I cannot imagine it.”

 

“It was a long time ago. Much has changed,” Maleficent replies, an uncomfortable expression passing over her face. Diaval in his human form cannot disguise his emotions, and so stares openly, sadly, at Maleficent. Leah looks at them both and comprehends, perhaps for the first time, the depth of power this faerie possesses.

 

Such changes must have come about after Stephan’s betrayal.

 

The space by the pond, in the shade of grey trees, becomes their unofficial home. Maleficent is prone to wander far and wide, often taking Diaval with her in his bird form. He will fly back regularly though, willing to watch over Aurora when Maleficent is far away. Leah would feel insulted, so rarely does she leave her daughter alone now that she has found her, but it appears to her more evidence of Maleficent’s determination to discover a fix for the curse.

 

She watches Maleficent interact with her daughter, and sees the truth in Maleficent’s rare smiles, Aurora’s happy chattering. Though Aurora is nearly a woman at fifteen, her infectious enthusiasm for life is like that of a child much younger. Some part of Leah is thankful for that – it helps her imagine, sometimes, that she has known Aurora longer than she really has. Despite missing out on so much, Leah is determined to miss out on no more, and so her relationship with Aurora thrives – no matter how difficult it is, some days, to speak of her past, she hides nothing from her daughter. (Nothing but the curse, which she does not speak of, even with Maleficent.) Aurora is troubled to know the extent of her mother’s suffering, but Leah reassures her, the way a mother ought, that it is not her doing – and that Leah wants nothing more than to simply be with her now.

 

In the matter of that relationship, Leah cannot help but be amazed with the ease with which she falls into the role of mother with her daughter. On her journey, she had wondered – even worried – whether she would live up to the title. Yet, thanks to her daughter’s magical ability to prompt and return love, it turns out that Leah has nothing to fear in that regard at all.

 

No, it is not Aurora to whom Leah’s more troubled feelings are directed. It is Maleficent.

 

The problems begin to arise when Leah realises that Aurora truly loves Maleficent. Though Aurora does not know of the curse that will inevitably befall her at Maleficent’s hands, should Maleficent be unable to undo her own magic, Leah cannot deny that the bond of mutual affection between her daughter and the woman who cursed her is strong. Leah wonders whether she ought to be jealous, but … She is not. Maleficent’s curse is torture enough for her, there is no sense in Leah’s anger punishing her further. And Leah knows that she too might have done something terrible, had she Maleficent’s power, to gain revenge upon Stephan. Though Leah may not forgive Maleficent just yet, her anger has subsided. The longer she stays in the Moors and watches her daughter brighten the mood of everybody about her, the more difficult it is to think of anything but the gratitude she feels at being with her. That is enough for now.

 

Still, it is obvious that Maleficent’s sorrow is etched on her every feature. But where Leah’s own have grown wan and lined with the years of emptiness she spent at the palace, under Stephan’s thumb, Maleficent remains beautiful. She does not appear sickened, or aged – she simply wears an expression of grief that rarely leaves for more than a few moments at a time. It does nothing to diminish her unearthly beauty. Every so often, Leah is seized by the urge to run her fingers along Maleficent’s cheekbones, to see if they are as sharp as they appear. Some morbid part of her is curious regarding the shape of Maleficent’s skull, whether there would be a pronounced different between it and her own pitifully human head.

 

Leah wonders whether that strange longing to know is something born of her constant thoughts of death under Stephan’s crushing weight, or whether it is something intrinsic to her nature. She does recall a certain curiosity about the cycle of living and dying amongst her people’s flocks as a child, but her father had deemed such knowledge inappropriate for a girl, and had put a stop to her learning almost before it began.

 

Leah wanders away from her daughter, by the great wall of thorns surrounding the Moors, and wonders who she would be without the men who she has been handed between. Her father, her husband – her courtiers, even. Her earliest memories are coloured by her father’s domineering hand, and her latest memories, though they are slowly being subsumed by new ones with her daughter in this strange land, are also still tinged with the grey, dull violence of her husband. The only man to whom Leah can profess no feelings of anxiety is Diaval, and, considering his avian origins, he hardly counts.

 

It occurs to Leah as well that she has had no women friends. The women at court were always too afraid to speak to her as an equal, and with no mother to guide her, no sisters to confer with …

 

She has her daughter now, of course. But her daughter is still young, and in need of guidance. The only other woman – or at least, the only other feminine creature – to whom Leah may turn is Maleficent. That is where her thoughts turn unexpectedly, whenever Leah is left alone to think.

 

One day, Maleficent returns from a journey to the furthest reaches of the wall of thorns, her face grave as always with news that Leah’s kingdom is still preparing for war with them. Leah turns her face away, ashamed, wishing she knew how to explain that she has never had power over her own kingdom – that Stephan stole her birthright many years ago.

 

Later, though, as Leah walks through the violet grasses of the Moors, gathering berries, Maleficent comes stalking, predator-like, towards her. Leah pauses in her actions, awaiting admonishment. Maleficent has never made any secret of her disdain for the world of men.

 

“I have been deep in thought,” Maleficent begins, and there is something almost nervous in her tone. Leah cocks her head, listening. “And I am given to wonder how Stephan took power the way he did. Did your king have no heir to succeed him?”

 

Leah shakes her head slowly, surprised. She had assumed that Maleficent kept her ear to the ground regarding the politics of men, to despise them so. Yet the faerie queen is clearly unaware of Leah’s royal origins.

 

“He did,” Leah says, hesitantly. “Oh, but he did. The king had a daughter who could have taken the throne after him. It is the done thing, elsewhere.”

 

The space between Maleficent’s eyebrows creases slightly as she considers the information. “And why did she not?”

 

“The king was bloodthirsty. A tyrant to his people and his family alike. He would not allow his daughter to rule when he could marry her, instead, to another like himself. A man who could prove his worth by destroying the king’s greatest enemy.”

 

Maleficent’s expression clears as she realises what Leah is implying.

 

“Then you are their rightful queen,” she says, gently.

 

Leah shakes her head again, this time in denial.

 

“No. My husband’s authority exceeds my own. It was decreed.”

 

Decreed the day he returned Maleficent’s wings to the king. A new heir for a new dynasty, with Leah as the bearer of future generations – and nothing more than that. Never free to exercise her royal blood in anything but childbirth.

 

“The more I learn of the world of men, the more I dislike it,” Maleficent says, wrinkling her nose slightly in distaste.

 

“It is … a difficult way to live,” Leah agrees.

 

Maleficent begins to walk away, having satisfied her curiosity, but Leah follows, wishing to explain. Maleficent turns at the sound of Leah brushing against the grasses, an eyebrow arched with curiosity.

 

“Men … At least, humanity … We are not all so evil,” Leah insists. Maleficent begins to pace again, and Leah walks alongside. “When I was a girl, there was so much I wanted to do for the world. I was a princess born, and eager to learn. But due to the reign of my father and, following him, my husband … my kingdom is not what it could be. The people suffer because of my husband’s madness. He drives them, day and night, to produce weapons against you. His obsession rules his heart, and so his heart rules his people. There is precious little happiness in the kingdom anymore. It is like a perpetual winter, devoid of any hope in the surety of spring’s return. Without a leader to rule justly …”

 

Leah trails off, and looks up to Maleficent at her side, who appears contemplative.

 

“I had not considered that it might be different, one day,” Maleficent admits.

 

“It could have been,” Leah sighs. “Were I able to return with Aurora, were it not for the curse … It need not be like this.”

 

Maleficent stiffens, as always, at the mention of the curse. Leah finds, though, strangely, that she feels no anger at it. She knows that Maleficent will find a way to undo what she did, and having given back her daughter, Leah knows that Maleficent has done much towards making amends with her.

 

“Do not feel that you must be in denial of yourself,” Leah says, daring to brush her hand against Maleficent’s bare wrist, “Or what you did. I have faith that you will discover a cure. I know that you love her as your own, and I allow it. How can I not, when I have longed to know that she is loved for so long now?”

 

Maleficent does not shake off Leah’s fingers, but she pauses before answering.

 

“You … are a singular woman, Queen Leah,” Maleficent says, finally. She draws a deep breath. “I had thought that your daughter alone was an outlier amongst her race, but it is not so. There is so much of you in her … And you have given me a new way of understanding the world, which I had come to believe impossible.”

 

The unexpected speech leaves Leah taken aback – but it is not unwelcome. She smiles in return, and changes the topic to something lighter, letting Maleficent pretend that they never bared their hearts at all.

 

They walk together over the course of the afternoon, discussing all that they see, and much that they do not, but can only imagine. A future undetermined. Leah finds her heart growing light, the way it usually does only around Aurora. There is something in Maleficent that draws Leah closer where, she knows, she ought to back away. Maleficent possesses the ethereal beauty and dignity that Leah, despite her time as queen, was never able to cultivate. It does not make her envious, though there is something … Something unnameable, strange, in the twisting of her stomach when Maleficent’s gaze falls upon her. Not the fear that Stephan’s looks had engendered, but something sweet and dark.

 

For a few months, they are happy, this strange family of the Moors. Diaval proves a loyal companion to Maleficent and Aurora, and a courteous friend to Leah. Maleficent’s love for Aurora is so obvious to Leah, now, that she wonders how she could have doubted it. And as for Leah … Her love for Aurora only grows, and despite Aurora’s initial hesitance, she proves herself an eager and loving daughter. Maleficent becomes a friend to Leah where before Leah had none, and it is strange, but not unwelcome, to have a companion in whom to confide. In truth, Leah finds herself constantly wishing for Maleficent’s companionship, scarcely able to recall anyone else to whom she has felt more fondly, or more strangely.

 

As time continues to pass, it comes to her. The name for such feelings – the fluttering of her heart at Maleficent’s attentions, the drawing of her eye at Maleficent’s presence, the prick of her ear at the sound of Maleficent’s voice.

 

It is love.

 

Not merely the love between friends, nor the love of family. It is the love of another who one cannot imagine life without. The love that is supposed to exist between husband and wife. And Leah knows that were she able, she would marry Maleficent a thousand times over her own husband.

 

She has no evidence of Maleficent’s regard, of course. Nothing to hold onto at night, daring to hope, while the others slumber. Leah is not foolish enough to believe that Maleficent will ever open her heart again to that kind of love, though Aurora has gone some way towards healing her. Leah must be content with what they have, the family she has found. And though her heart may occasionally whisper treacherous longings in her ear, she _is_ happy. A family such as this is more than Leah had even been capable of dreaming in those long years wasted in the castle. It is enough.

 

Indeed, it could almost be called a happy ending, if Maleficent’s powers were not so strong.

 

~

 

The sixteenth anniversary of Aurora’s birth sneaks up on Leah.

 

She should have seen it coming, of course. Maleficent patrols the borders of the Moors with ever-more anxiety, and avoids being alone with either Leah or Aurora, taking only Diaval for company – and even then, in his bird form. Somehow Leah does not see it – she does not want to.

 

On the night before Aurora’s sixteenth birthday, Maleficent returns from her patrol more agitated than usual. Aurora has gone wandering over the hills, and Maleficent quickly instructs Diaval to find her and bring her back to the pondside camp. Thenceforth, she paces, back and forth, until Leah feels dizzy with it.

 

“What is it?” Leah inquires, knowing by now the signs of Maleficent’s bad moods.

 

Maleficent turns to her in agitation. “Do you not know? Can you not sense the time passing?”

 

“… What do you mean?” Leah asks, though her blood runs cold with implications.

 

“Tomorrow. Tomorrow, Aurora will turn sixteen. I cannot … I have searched, I have begged, I have done everything I can, but still …”

 

Leah stands, dropping the fine blades of grass and flowers she has been weaving. “You said – you _promised_ me –”

 

“I know!” Maleficent cries. “I did everything, everything. It was no use, my hatred was too strong, all those years ago … I planned it this way, I ensured that there would be no cure, no solution.”

 

“True love’s kiss,” Leah interrupts. “You said that the curse would be broken with true love’s kiss.”

 

Maleficent’s expression shatters into something like despair. “I said that not out of pity. It was malice. It was what he told me, all those years ago. He told me that he had given me true love’s kiss. Such a thing does not exist. I wanted … I threw it back in his face.”

 

“Then …” Leah can hardly bring herself to say the words, but she must know, must confirm what Maleficent has wrought. “Aurora will die, tomorrow. And there is no recourse to prevent it.”

 

Maleficent stands still as a stature, as is her wont during times of great pain.

 

“No,” she whispers. “Worse still. A sleep like death. That is what I promised. Tomorrow she will sleep, and never awaken, never age, never die. And her father, the king … he will live, as ever he has done before, never knowing.”

 

Leah wishes to reply, wishes for some small sign of hope – but there is none. Her knees give out, and she sinks to the ground, staring blankly into the pond, unable to comprehend what is happening. Aurora will fall asleep on the morrow and never awaken. And all Leah’s longing to be with her daughter, all her newfound love for Maleficent and affection for Diaval, her strange patchwork family of the Moors … it will all die with Aurora’s loss.

 

She remains there well into the evening, and is joined by Maleficent on the ground soon after. They do not touch, perhaps out of fear on Maleficent’s fear at Leah’s grief. But Leah feels nothing, nothing. It is like being inside the castle walls once more, with an empty space inside her, unable to be filled. Time does not pass. She cannot feel her fingers, sensing herself half a step behind, unable to comprehend reality.

 

The night slowly encroaches upon them, and Diaval returns. With a flick of Maleficent’s wrist, he returns to his human form, a pinched expression on his face.

 

“Where is Aurora?” he asks, and both Maleficent and Leah turn to him, startled.

 

“I sent you to fetch her,” Maleficent says, slowly.

 

“Aye. But she was not to be found. I looked far and farther, but … No sign,” Diaval confirms.

 

Leah turns to Maleficent, and, uncaring of how weak she is by comparison, grips Maleficent’s arms.

 

“Find her,” Leah demands. “We must set out at once. _We must find her_.”

 

Maleficent nods, once, and that is all that is needed. They agree to split amongst themselves, Diaval in the form of an owl to see well through the night, Maleficent with speed aided by magic, and Leah with only her human feet to carry her along the border of the Moors.

 

But despite their concerted efforts, and a night full of trudging feet and striding legs and soaring wings, they do not find Aurora by the morning. Leah’s aching legs give out, and she slides against the trunk of an enormous thorny wall to the ground, letting out a wail that tears out of her throat against her will.

 

Hours later, the sun having risen into the sky, that is how Maleficent finds her. The elfin woman is astride a great black horse, who Leah knows instantly to be Diaval in yet another form. Maleficent holds out a hand, her face lined with anxiety.

 

“She has left the Moors. I spoke with several creatures – they told me she overheard our argument last night. She has gone to the castle.”

 

Leah’s heart drops into her stomach. She scrambles to her feet.

 

“Take me to her,” she says, unable to say anything else.

 

She climbs upon Diaval behind Maleficent, and they are away in an instant.

 

They race against the sun with the impossible speed afforded by Maleficent’s magic, yet the day passes too quickly – the forest melts away from around them, the fields opening up as the sun begins to set. Astonished faces stare as they pass, humanity encroaching on every side as they move inexorably towards the castle. Leah does not see them, though. Her heart pounds with a ferocity she has never known, and she can hardly breathe.

 

And then – as the last ray of light on the horizon disappears, as the gates of the castle loom before them –

 

A piercing pain lances through her side, and she screams.

 

Diaval rears, and both she and Maleficent lose their seats and tumble towards the ground.

 

Leah gathers herself quickly, scrambling to her feet, towards where Maleficent is sitting, head bowed, hand upon her chest. But when Maleficent looks up, haunted, Leah knows that it is over.

 

Her daughter is gone.

 

~

 

They do not wait even an hour before gathering themselves, but the minutes before they can begin to plan pass agonisingly slowly.

 

The silence is unbearable. Their failure is unbearable.

 

Eventually, it is agreed, they three will enter the castle to take Aurora back and bring her home. If she must not wake, then so be it, but she will rest in her home.

 

Whether it will remain Leah’s home is not something she considers. She only knows that without her daughter she will not live long.

 

Leah leads the charge, silently, brutally. She knows how to enter the castle unseen and unheard, but the hallways are filled with great, hulking structures of iron. The metal burns Maleficent as she passes, and she hisses, but says nothing more. Another one of Stephan’s terrible designs against her. Diaval, in the form of a man, follows along behind.

 

It is not difficult to guess where Stephan will have placed Leah’s daughter. The highest tower – the jewel in his crown. Another one of his things.

 

They climb in silence; Maleficent’s robes dragging along the ground in whispers, Diaval’s feet as light as a bird’s. Leah herself sounds like exactly what she is: a woman, grieving.

 

They are before the doors.

 

Leah cannot raise her hands to open them, to have proof of her daughter’s curse.

 

Nor can Maleficent, it seems. She stands frozen by Leah’s side, unmoving. In the end, Diaval silently pushes the doors inwards.

 

Arurora is revealed in a bed of gold, her perfect face still and smiling in her sleep. Leah must resist the urge to simply run forwards and take her daughter in her arms, knowing that it will not help.

 

Instead, she walks. Diaval slips behind, and Maleficent remains at her side. Leah will find the time to feel anger at her later for this terrible thing – this curse – yet for now, they walk together as Aurora’s mothers. At the edge of the great bed, Leah stops, while Maleficent continues around to the other side, possible unwilling to crowd Leah at such a time as this.

 

Aurora’s expression is peaceful. For that much, Leah is grateful.

 

“I failed you,” she whispers, suddenly. She had not thought to speak, but cannot stop herself. “My only child. My daughter. I failed you.”

 

She draws a shuddering breath, placing her palm against the back of Aurora’s hand.

 

“I am so sorry, that I was not there. That I succumbed to misery and despair and lost my chance to raise you. I was not the mother you deserved. You needed someone to fight for you and I did not.”

 

The tears are at her throat, but she continues speaking, the words blurring together in her pain, the effort to get them out before she can speak no longer.

 

“And when I saw you for the first time a year ago, I was overcome with everything I had lost. I thought you would hate me. I thought, maybe I will not be enough – I was _not_ enough. But you smiled, and called me mother. I did not deserve you, for that. And I will miss you every day that you are gone. What little time we had was the best of my life, my daughter. The best days of all.”

 

Her throat closes, and she raises a hand to her mouth, unable to say anything else.

 

Maleficent, on the other side of the bed, looks down at Aurora with a haunted expression. Leah wonders, in some distant part of herself, if her agony looks half as similar.

 

“I will not ask your forgiveness because what I have done to you is unforgivable. I was so lost in hatred and revenge. Sweet Aurora, you stole what was left of my heart. And now I have lost you forever. I swear, no harm will come to you as long as I live. And not a day shall pass that I don't miss your smile.”

 

_It’s a pretty speech_ , some unforgiving part of Leah thinks. But the words are true, and that’s what really hurts her.

 

Without consciously choosing to, she finds herself moving with Maleficent, both of them leaning down to kiss Aurora’s hands. It is the last time she will ever touch her daughter, and the tears blur her vision – but Aurora’s skin is soft against her cheek.

 

They turn away at the same time, unable to bear it.

 

Leah does not think of where they will go, what they will do. Whether they can remain together at all, given what has passed. She simply walks towards the door, accepting whatever fate may offer.

 

Except, behind her – a rustling of bedsheets –

 

Her heart skips a beat, and Maleficent stills at her side. There is a moment more of silence, and then –

 

“Mother? Godmother?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know what you thought!

**Author's Note:**

> [My Tumblr.](https://gallantrejoinder.tumblr.com/)


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